Beginning of the End
by KittyKMae
Summary: (PG for later stuff; angst 'cause it seems to fit the best) Weffy and Jath, two Pemalites, and Raffy and Ceth, two Chee, don't realize how much and how soon their lives will change...(Chapter Three...where are they going to live now?)
1. The Prologue

A/N: *stares around the fandom, amazed* Gosh, I never thought I'd write for Animorphs again...and yet, here I am, posting a ficcy. I haven't been in here since before the chaptering system...Wow. But anyway, some inspiration struck me when I was re-reading 'The Android (canon book 10)'...the part where Erek is telling the Animorphs (minus Rachel) about their escape to this world...I wanted to know more about the Pemalites... Anyways, here's the story! (This chapter is just so ya get to know the characters a little. The actual plot will begin later.) 

Disclaimer: I do not own the Pemalites or the Chee; however, Weffy and Jath are OC's. Raffy and Ceth are sort of OC's--they're early versions of some of the chars we know and love :) 

  
Weffy laughed. She smiled at Jath. "I know something you don't know!"   
Jath rolled his eyes, smiling. "Of course you do! You're a psychic! You always know stuff I don't!" Jath said that without any resentment in his voice whatsoever. He knew that, although Weffy was psychic, she wasn't very good at math (no offense to Weffy, of course), and that was something he could do easily. They were perfectly even, as both of the talents were equally important and useful.   
"Mom's building an android! She said she might be able to program a sense of humor! That'll be amazing!" Weffy said, dancing with excitement.   
"Oh! That'd be great! I hope we can program a sense of humor into the other androids! Laughing is so much fun!"   
Weffy nodded, smiling. "Yep! Laughing is the happiest thing on anywhere!"   
"I hope she succeeds!"   
"So do I!"   
Suddenly, Weffy jumped up and down. That didn't particularly surprise Jath, as she was the happiest person he knew (and he knew lots of people), and the most easily-pleased.   
"Guess what! Guess what! She's activating the android right now! She's testing it out!" Weffy's powers were not affected by distance at all. "She's telling it a joke--IT'S LAUGHING! IT WORKED! MOM PROGRAMMED HUMOR INTO A CHEE!"   
"Yay!" Jath cheered.   
It was only a few minutes before most of the planet knew that there was a program for a sense of humor. And it was only about an hour before each Chee had been given one. And it was less than a day before the celebrations started. Not a Pemalite on the planet wasn't happier than they were normally (and that was an awful lot).   
"Hiya, Raffy!" Weffy yelled at a Chee. Raffy was her next-door neighbor, and had been among the first to get the sense of humor.   
"Hello, Weffy!" the Chee replied. She laughed. "I just can't get used to laughing! This is the best feeling ever!"   
"I told ya so!" Weffy started laughing, too. "Laughing is the best thing in the world!"   
"Nobody can debate that!" Jath agreed, also laughing.   
"Why did the chicken cross the road?" Raffy asked suddenly. "To get to the other side!" Everyone started laughing even harder. Even a joke as old as that (many people said it could be traced several millennia back) was funny.   
Weffy turned to look at her home. In about five seconds, someone would be coming out of it, she knew. An android. Yes, the one her mother had built with the sense-of-humor program.   
"Hiya!" she called as he opened the door. The Chee waved at her.   
"Hello!" Ceth replied, smiling.   
"I'm hungry! Let's go get something to eat," Weffy said.   
"Me, too!" Jath replied.   
(Of course, Ceth and Raffy weren't hungry, as Chee don't need to eat, but they agreed to go anyway.) 

  
A/N: *sweatdrop* They sound like they're hippies, high, five-year-olds, or all of the above, don't they? Oh, well. (BTW, 'Ceth' is pronounced 'seth'. Raffy is pronounced 'RAFF-ee'. Weffy is pronounced 'WEFF-ee'. Jath is pronounced 'jath', just in case y'all wanted to know.) *re-reads chapter* ^^;; The end of the chapter sorta stinks as an ending place, don't it? Oh, well... 


	2. The Attack

A/N: Well, here it is. It's not as happy as the prologue, but there've gotta be some sad chapters with a title like 'Beginning of the End'... 

It had been nearly five years (by a Pemalite calendar) since the Chee had been programmed for humor. Weffy and Jath were sixteen and fifteen, respectively. Weffy and Jath were playing ballfall, the current sports fad. They were waiting for turns at tossing.   
"Guess what?" Weffy asked Jath suddenly, her eyes lighting up.   
"What?" Jath asked. He ducked a falling ball.   
"They just found another alien species!" Weffy, whose favorite school subject was biology, announced excitedly.   
Jath grinned. "Good! Maybe we can trade technology!"   
Weffy rolled her eyes. "Of course *you'd* be excited about their technology," she complained good-naturedly, thinking of the billions of times her computer had been accidentally destroyed in Jath's quest for technological knowledge. "What about the abnormalities in their genetic structure?"   
"What about them?" Jath asked, puzzled.   
"The aliens are all the same! It's like they're all twins or however many there are! They might be clones, even--but we'll ask them soon. The distance scanners are so useful," Weffy said.   
Suddenly Jath realized everyone was staring at them.   
"Our turn!" he pointed out, dragging Weffy onto the field and promptly forgetting all about the latest species. 

Weffy's mother, Hezzy, looked up at the alien ship, puzzled.   
"Why don't they land?" she asked her husband, Noff.   
"I'm not sure," he replied. The others in the group shook their heads, just as confused.   
The group was one of four teams that welcomed aliens to the Pemalite world for the first time. There were several biologists, a few technicians (Hezzy among them), a doctor, and two or three politicians. None of them had ever heard of a species such as this--from the images in the only message the aliens had sent, they looked disturbingly like they were dangerous. The expressionless bluish eyes, the lava-like skin, the claws that could be pulled out of the way...all were disturbing.   
But looks can be deceiving, of course. After all, the Chee could look like whatever they wished, and yet they were Pemalite at heart.   
Hezzy noticed an appendage, a rather weaponlike one, point towards her group.   
She started to voice a puzzled question, but was incinerated mid-sentence. 

"No!" Weffy shouted suddenly, closing her eyes and covering her ears, trying to block out the images, wishing for the first time in her life that her talents weren't so strong. The two or three other psychics in the game looked horrified and confused.   
"Weffy? What's wrong?!" Jath asked, instantly beside his best friend. "Are you all right?"   
"They killed them! They killed them!" she said, confused and...feeling bad? She didn't have a name to put to her emotion, because Pemalites didn't feel bad very often.   
"Killing?" He was confused. Why would anyone kill another? It was unthinkable. "Who?"   
"They killed the welcome group! They incinerated my parents!"   
By now, all of the Pemalites were grabbing any communicators they had. Radios (although those were practically obsolete), computers, anything.   
"Here! I found something!" one of Jath's friends, a guy named Deh, shouted. Everyone crowded around his computer's h-screen, except for a few of Weffy's best friends (Jath, of course, included), who were trying to comfort her (and failing miserably).   
"All Pemalites, Chee, and visiting creatures are to solar evac IMMEDIATELY! This is not a drill. Aggressive aliens are launching attacks NOW. Do not attempt to retrieve belongings from your homes--get out of the solar system IMMEDIATELY." Complete silence prevailed as the message started to repeat itself. Deh shut the computer off automatically.   
After a few minutes of shocked silence, Weffy offered, "I've got a trans. We can all fit on it until we can get to the nearest colony."   
"I've got one, too," someone volunteered.   
The group quietly split up. 

A/N: So, whaddaya think? Is it living up to the first chap? And do ya think Weffy's got a consistent character? I'm not quite sure. She keeps doing unexpected things, and I have to keep editing to make sure she's believable. I'm not sure I'm succeeding. Anyways, I'll probably have the next chapter up tomorrow. I've just got to edit it a bit more. 


	3. The Leaving

A/N: Sorry this took so long! The next one'll be up next week, if all goes well. 

Disclaimer: I own a computer that's way too full. I own a copy of most of the Animorphs books. I own several Mary Sues. I own Weffy and Jath (but I just mentioned them, didn't I?). I own nothing else. 

Two Chee were hurrying towards Weffy's house right as Weffy and the friends that were coming with her got there.   
"You heard about the evac?" Ceth asked. The group nodded.   
"How are you getting off-planet?" Jath asked the two androids.   
"We aren't sure," Raffy admitted.   
"You're welcome on my trans," Weffy offered.   
"Thank you," Raffy said. Ceth nodded in agreement. Both were definitely relieved.   
"Maybe we should check and make sure all the neighbors have rides," Jath said.   
Everyone agreed. How could they not? If lives were at stake, they would help.   
About five frantic minutes later, a few more Pemalites and a lot more Chee were boarding Weffy's trans.   
The small ship took off. 

Weffy stared out at the blackness. The computer had just informed those on the small trans that the Pemalite planet was now in several small pieces.   
Someone started to sing a goodbye song--one of those used for funerals. Weffy would've joined in, but singing was not among her strengths. Most of the rest of the ship did, though.   
There were many transes and other ships leaving the planets in the Pemalite system, but there were so many, so many that had not made it. So many that had still been on-planet when the high-energy beams had split the planet in two, like a ripe daela fruit, and then into smaller chunks to make sure no one could possibly survive. So many that had been decompressed when the beams destroyed the force fields protecting the lunar settlement. There were so many on ships that had been hit by chunks of the Pemalite world. There were so many, so many...   
But there were many who were still living. There were many ships hurrying away from the two still-intact planets and the one moon that had not been destroyed. There were many who were in other solar systems, like the one Weffy and her friends were going to.   
"Let's get out of here," Jath suggested, pushing through the crowd of people in the main room. "We don't want to be in the neighborhood if they destroy the ships, too."   
"Why would they? Why did they do this?" Weffy wondered, taking the ship's controls.   
"Why is *any* species warlike?" Jath wondered.   
"It's crazy. Purely crazy. I mean, I know everything has something good in it, but war? Killing?"   
"Look! Look!" someone shouted, interrupting their philosophical discussion and pointing out the window. Ships were being incinerated by the creatures' weapons.   
Weffy checked several readouts. No, it was too risky to go into Z-space with so much debris nearby. She turned the force fields on to full power and hoped for the best. The creatures were by far outnumbered, but the Pemalite vessels were helpless--it was horrible.   
One of the creatures' ships turned towards Weffy's craft. It fired at her. Weffy had to jerk the ship out of the way--lucky it had 4D avoidance technology. The beam glanced off the force field of a ship past Weffy's. It didn't do any damage to either Pemalite ship, luckily.   
Weffy desperately jerked the controls back and forth to avoid the beams.   
"No! Don't move!" Jath suddenly shouted. "We're being herded--it's a trap!"   
She was too busy to reply, but Weffy's jerking started to move in a different direction as other ships started firing on her. She realized, horrified, that her ship was among the last intact. She had to keep herself and her friends safe!   
Finally--she was away from the two planets and the loosely-defined asteroid belt between them. She was free in space. She quickly jumped to Z-space.   
"Wait. If we went to LSx2, wouldn't relativity make sure got wherever we decide to go long after they were gone?" Jath asked.   
Weffy considered this, but finally decided, "No. What if by the time we get there, all the Pemalites will be gone?"   
"Incoming transmission. Origin PEACE. Accept?" PEACE was the Pemalite/Chee Embassy at Cienth-Exdente, so Weffy accepted.   
"Is anyone there? Is anyone there?" a scared-looking Pemalite asked anxiously. PEACE must be beaming generally, Weffy concluded.   
"Is anyone alive? Please don't let you all be gone! Answer! Please!"   
"We're here," Weffy said, replying. "There were two or three ships besides us when I jumped to Z-space, but I don't know if they're still there."   
"How many of you are on your ship?"   
Weffy tried to think, but she wasn't sure. She looked at Jath, who could do almost any problem easily and in his head.   
"Almost six hundred, both Chee and Pemalite," he said.   
"We don't have enough room on this planet," the PEACE ambassador said sadly. "The system is overcrowded already. But there must be somewhere that could hold another species..."   
Weffy glanced to the side of the com screen. There was a generalized map. She typed in a few commands, and soon about thirty solar systems lit up.   
"My computer says there are some," Weffy said. "We'd better decide where to go. Should we report tomorrow?"   
"Yes, that would be fine," the PEACE official said. They terminated the communication. 

A/N: LOL, the chapters just get dumber and dumber, don't they? *sigh* Oh, well, maybe someday my writing will be good... 


	4. The Decision

A/N: Well, here it is: the long-awaited chapter 3. Not. LOL. Anyway, here it is. 

Weffy accessed the ship's intercom. "We need to decide where we're going," she said. None of the ship's physical rooms were big enough to hold everyone, so she accessed a main chatroom. Two or three others were already there, and more windows were constantly opening.   
"There are some planets, inhabited by unadvanced species, that could hold us, but PEACE is too full to hold us. None of our other embassies are big enough to hold all of us on this ship, let alone all of us *plus* the Pemalites already there. So where to?" Weffy said, informing everyone of the basic problem.   
"Remember those Naedians?" a Pemalite named Jeran asked. "They occupy only a small portion of their planet, and their system is small. The creatures would have a hard time locating us there."   
"But their planet is only marginally inhabitable. We would be confined to a narrow band near the equator of the inhabited planet, and we would be destroyed by any shift in temperature. Some of the physically weaker amongst us would not survive one winter," a geologist argued.   
"What about the system of Janatha?" someone suggested. "There aren't any sentient species on it, and the temperature is very nice."   
"But what about those subsentient birds? We could disrupt their evolution, keeping them from ever becoming sentient."   
"Maybe..."   
After they'd gone through about twenty planets that all seemed to be not quite right, someone finally suggested a small planet circling around a medium-sized yellow star.   
"What about Earth? The primates there are sentient already, creating cities and such. There's a wonderful variety of life, and the temperatures go from very hot to very cold, but with a lot of good weather in between," a Chee said.   
"But what about the fact that there's only one sun? One very weak sun."   
"We aren't plants; we don't photosynthesize. We don't need a lot of light; only enough to see by, and there's enough for that."   
"There's not much gravity, either."   
"So we'll bounce if we fall down."   
"Well, what about all the asteroids in the system? It's not very stable. Earth has taken major hits several times already, even getting split once. Where do you think that relatively huge satellite came from? And the local flora and fauna aren't very stable, either--you know how many mass extinctions have occurred there!"   
"Look, if we get there and we don't like it, we can always relocate," someone pointed out. "Let's just try it out for a few years."   
Everyone nodded, satisfied.   
"Should we vote?" Weffy asked. "Or are there no objections?"   
"Wait. Do we have to go to Earth right away?" someone asked. "Could we stop at some of our embassies? Please? Some of us could get off there, if they have family, or some of our families could come with us," the Pemalite pleaded.   
"I don't see anything wrong with that," Weffy decided. She set the course for PEACE first. (It was her ship, so she was allowed to run it--most ships worked best with their owners. A lot of people claimed that the ships' programs were what had been in early Chee, but that was probably just a legend.)   
Weffy pulled up a game on the ship's computer. This might be a journey affecting hundreds of Chee and Pemalites, but she could still have fun, couldn't she? 

A/N: Well, how was it? Please review--I've got less reviews than chapters, which is pretty bad, considering I only have four chapters up... 


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